JOHN O’BRIEN is one of the key people behind what might be Cork’s golden age of opera and musical theatre.

Antwerp

ISRAEL should remove 10 major West Bank checkpoints to give a badly needed boost to the Palestinian economy, a group of Israeli ex-generals and Palestinian officials said in a joint report yesterday.

A plane carrying holidaymakers crashed today in western Venezuela after reporting engine problems, killing all 160 people on board, officials said.